Micro 1089: the coalition, again [scum PT]

[hellbooks]

skitter i dont think im going to make things very easy for you
just as a warning

[hellbooks]

and of course as an apology in advance

[hellbooks]

if I start begging to get limmed feel free to spray me with water

[hellbooks]

ok well i need to warn you that im going to start with an absolute bomb of a post that is going to be so exceptionally bad

[hellbooks]

if anyone asks tell them i am giving the game the Silent Treatment.
and if anyone asks how i was able to tell you that uh....... idk i trust you to figure it out

[hellbooks]

o skitz..... at some point i really gotta just come clean and tell these people that im mafia because other wise theyre never gonna town read me for a shitpost ever again....

[hellbooks]

drafting a joke for me to whip out later:

ok hellbooks i think you are super scummy for this, this, and this. what say you.

uhhh.. hold on

@mod vla for 4 hours while i frantically think up a response to that question

[hellbooks]

skitz if i were to somehow come up with an extremely bad plan that no good scum player who values their life would ever go along with, would you ever consider going along with it for wifom purposes (no plan yet but i wanna know if its an avenue worth pursuing for the future)

[hellbooks]

Looks like the bad plan is me voting you. Didnt even fully mean to it just kinda slipped out. ㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ

[hellbooks]

yeah im vaguely thinking that i get into the coalition and then sort of flame out grandiosely while taking out a lot of them with me along the way and then you go and deepwolf with the rest of them ftw

[hellbooks]

im definitely not nearly as much of a lock as one might hope; i think people tend to tire of me as soon as the game gets more argument-dense. but i agree about being chill as per step 1 of hellbooks' guide to playing scum: the only guide you'll ever need

[hellbooks]

maybe we should also be wary of this rather accurate line of logic popping up

one team that popped into my head was skitter/tris bc i think skitter seeming somewhat resigned to being outside was surprising to me. i think she wouldn't do that as scum with very many people though but if it was anyone i think it would be if she was with a consensus townread? i don't really actively scumread either of these tho

[hellbooks]

I might be openly scumclaiming with you a little bit but I hope you dont worry too much about it. Youre free to worry about it ofc in which case um sorry

[hellbooks]

One might think i'm alluding to the v/la joke when i said "I am thinking about them in the shower and before bed and like drafting them in my scum pts and such" but what its actually mpre about is the 4 drafts of the libraryverse opening post that i still have littering this pt

[hellbooks]

Yeah i was thinking at exactly this moment that you should be bussing me

[hellbooks]

Gonna sink into the darkness and let you shiningly be persephone for a while

[hellbooks]

In my absence you should say something like "man it must be so humiliating for hellbooks to have to go and transcribe that post in her monastery" and when isis is like "whoa why did that sound like a hellbooks post is she coaching you" well ill leave you to figure out the response

[hellbooks]

people reading the scum pt in postgame "oh so she really is just like this all the time"

[hellbooks]

I personally think the shift in my posting has less to do with being scumread and more with me running out of my medication and my pharmacy being late on refill but I'm going to choose not to say that because it seems unfairly manipulative and also maybe the haters are correctly identifying some element of my subconscious that I don't know about

[hellbooks]

Thx : ) gonna go back tomorrow to bother them again

[hellbooks]

yeahp. : ) well it might mean i have to endgame and maybe you might want to rest assured that i'll lose one of those. and i did not and it seems like i might not be able to until at least monday. eff the pharmacy.... so yea earlier today i had the thought that maybe i should ask you whether or not youd like me to replace out. i was worried that my continued lack of being able to get meds and also general pain and listlessness would possibly portend a future period of ill or maybe just not-so-great health. but im doing better tonight and i think i'll keep toughing it out : )

[hellbooks]

The thing about 138 is that the post tris towneead is either town lamist or scum lamist and Shea said itt he doesn't play lamist

my takeaway from the extended exchange was that shea scumread a different aspect of the post than the part that tris townread and neither of them really were about the post as a whole

Experienced a shocking and brilliant twinge of melancholy from this, lets just like ruminate on all the ways we're doomed to misunderstand each other and how text mafia inherently brings that part of human interaction to the forefront

thinkign about how this was my favorite post i made this game and no one reacted to it at all (sorry skitter as the person with sole access to my "behidn the scenes" (omg bts reference) brain youre bearing the full brunt of my Needy Side)
o skitter..... will i ever stop having to apologize to you....

what if we all decide on a coalition as usual but don't actually submit it, and then we let the people in the coalition vote amongst themselves for one player who they think shouldn't be in the coalition, and one they think should be, and we make the swap. or alternatively they vote for no swap

YOOO This is such a good idea and maybe they could perform some kind of group activity that frames the way that votes are made? like perhaps we can give them all some sort of "role" and these roles can all kind of be like.... "investigative" but in subtly different ways? idk just a thought

NO WAIT HOW BOUT THIS HOW BOUT THIS ok so lets say we make a coalition and then datisi reveals one member who is not part of the coalition and then we choose to swap or not to swap and maybe goats are involved somehow? idk just a thought

this was my second favorite post i made this game so far

Or you could wait and pressure me until my true nature eventually blossoms forth, leaking game relevant (?) words like the bleeding guggenheim tiktok robot

as a final bit of directors commentary i was really happy at being able to reference the bleeding guggenheim robot because thats something ive kind of wanted to do in some form of post or tweet or real life conversation for at least eleven months. and this suddenly came to mind when i was making this post at the time and i was like oh yeah i gotta put that in there which maybe makes it come out a little forced

[hellbooks]

i really don't get the transcribing thing lol
and yeah since it seems like i might (?) be getting in and te thread is souring on you a bit it's prudent to do the distancing thing

so i just had the thought that it would be funny to advance the idea that your posting is generally so good as to merit monks that go and transcribe it into copies like they did with important books before the printing press. and it was also a follow up on the idea of doing frivolous v/la. and it led into this other thing that amused me where you and i cant be in the thread at the same time in like a tragic tale of eternal separation by some sort of heavenly mandate. obviously i did a poor job at communicating the full idea of any of this bc it was, as are basically all of my posts, a self indulgent and navel gazing exercise

also i am also easily tempted into being a little pestful and annoying to you in the game thread (like when i was needling you into using my avatar etc etc) which i think has much less to do with being scumpartners and more like "ok i see a really cool and self-assured person in the distance so lets go and be a little annoying to them" i guess im kind of imagining how people go in front of the buckingham palace guards and try to make them laugh except what im doing is actually more normaler and less weirder than that i swear

[hellbooks]

She suggested the last bit in the scum pt

ok what is so salient about this is that i absolutely would tell my scum partner to make quips on my behalf in the scum pt

sorry my hand kind of took control of me and made this post i was like a woman possessed

[hellbooks]

i promise that me bussing you was a next level tactic to engage fire into going back and solidifying their own townread on you as they try to explain it to me

[hellbooks]

I think this post gives hellbooks more credit for "having a plan" than she usually does.

I find myself being unusually offended by this even though I can definitely see how it's very easy for someone to always take me at face value as an "Irrational Actor"

[hellbooks]

Just feels weirdly belittling I guess

[hellbooks]

I think one of the best route here is if we both make it into the coal -> I get blasted -> town is steered easily into the conclusion that i kind of sacrificed my longterm equity to get myself into the coal because scum was on the outside looking in -> they hunt around in the fun car and get jack for shit and hopefully by then its winnable

Any strategy has to account for the fact that my standing here is really in the dumps

Also im doing like such a bad job at distancing from you, sorry

[hellbooks]

well it looked for a few minutes yesterday that i was somehow maybe gonna snake my way into the coal but i didnt really have the energy to capitalize on that momentum. i guess ill try and do what i can to salvage my reputation but i think that might simply be a task im impossibly behind on. well i guess there was that thing about "if you snow only one person..." and i guess that person is tris for me. i really do think i should have repped out when i did tbh, got so mad at shea being like "hellbooks is lurking" despite the fact that he kind of doesnt know about my health situation (by design so i think thats just me being self destructive behavior)

[hellbooks]

yea im hoping that we just make it to a clean d3 win off of the back of your carry performance

[hellbooks]

they should extend the sig limit so that you can get like your full hall of fame

[hellbooks]

isis might be limmable if it goes past d3, though

[hellbooks]

i think ill end up voting ari at some point

[hellbooks]

i dont think i said i didnt like this coalition. but obv it was wrong. sheep is the easy answer. i hope its scum outside the coalition. i dont think hellbooks is it. im kinda feeling isis town because she's pocketting me. so i guess that leaves fire and brass if its outside the coal

Fire and me is literally impossible can you like think for 30 seconds?

calling out this post as not only rude but also wrong and misreading what tris is saying

[hellbooks]

I havent read yet but you definitely arent ruining anything!!!!!dont worry!!!

[hellbooks]

Continuing to just be confident that you wont flip today but if you do,ill do all of the things you tell me to do but im also going to try and not make a visible effort to win the game. i think im just gonna keep screwing around and hope people let me stick around until the end. to maintain the thin veneer of authenticity that i have

[hellbooks]

definitely just a cold move for me to continue to be voting you and also wrong and bad because im literally going to get less than 2/3 of a townpoint for doing it

[hellbooks]

i hope you can take care of yourself!!! dont worry about the game at all!!! real life always most important!

[hellbooks]

up until now i was continuing to be confident that the lim would be tris

if we lose please let me take like all of the credit for the loss

[hellbooks]

skitz if i were to somehow come up with an extremely bad plan that no good scum player who values their life would ever go along with, would you ever consider going along with it for wifom purposes (no plan yet but i wanna know if its an avenue worth pursuing for the future)

Self fulfilling prophecy

[hellbooks]

Skitz is shea lock for nk or is there room to wickedly consider like an isis shot

[hellbooks]

if we lose please let me take like all of the credit for the loss

made a post in order to really cement this

[hellbooks]

[hellbooks]

ily skitter and sorry for everyothing

[hellbooks]

i kill shea

[hellbooks]

if it werent for skitters direction id have considered nk isis for wifom and also so i can rulebreakingly say "im scum >:)" in seattle (joke)

[hellbooks]

stratiegy matrix: d2 fire -> n2 isis -> d3 brass i guess, then me and two of tris/ari/sheep can just hang out in an ELO torture lobby for a bit where i just try and be as unhelpful as possible

[hellbooks]

drafting another evil stinky ate post to use if it becomes relevant in the future which would be something like

i guess the worst thing about the world where skitter and i are scum together here would be that skitter would literally blacklist me for a thousand years for playing the way i did

[hellbooks]

The thing is tjat this game is Soooo tantalizingly winnable but i cant let my self covet victory i have to remain above such earthly desires. Because of step 1 of my scum strategy guide

[hellbooks]

I think we have like a 1 out of 3 chance of winning in a tris sheep books torture lobby. Id really expect both of them to suddenly realize everything thats been going on.

[hellbooks]

The way you engaged the whole dialogue makes me like visualize the skitter post of "ugh. Really sorry I couldn't keep up the energy level I needed for this. Definitely just kill Shea. You can win this "

Example of a post that makes me want to scum claim

[hellbooks]

Im sure that some or even most people play their town game in a way that deliberately makes it possible to emulate as scum. Not me. It is such a chore to emulate my town game (joke) (but the joke obscures some deeper truth)

[hellbooks]

ok thinking now that isis cant actually be the kill bc the logic would probably follow that i should have been the kill after that

[hellbooks]

i think isis is probably a harder lim than ari despite fire having her as their "weakest townread"
but as i mentioned before, it would be pretty easy to point out the fact that when isis dies N2 its weird when hellbooks doesn't die N3
isis sort of created all of that ari NK wifom right at thread lock
ari N2 kill, isis N3 kill, tris/brass/me ELO... again it feels like either of those people could very easily realize that this is like a conventionally perfect hellbooks win setup and come to an understanding. but i guess its still plausible that tris/brass scum would see that as close to their best F3 anyway
could i kill brass... what would that look like... like a tris/ari/me F3? no.... that doesnt seem very good.... ugh but i really think that tris would simply just solve the game in ELO though.... ok so what if i killed tris? can I convince ari to go brass over me in ELO? i mean ari townreads me bc of laser... i could argue that i wouldn't want to kill the ari/isis masonry because they both townread me actually.... and its easy to see how any scum would want to pick off that masonry. ok yea. i think ari has to be the conventionally correct kill that skitters ghost would tell me to go with.

i kill aristeia

[hellbooks]

it just really seems like it should be blindingly obvious to everyone that im scum LOL

[hellbooks]

datisi can you give me some words of encouragement : ) we all know youre cheering for me : )

[hellbooks]

i kind of dont want tris to get limmed today because i straight up think fire would vote me over brass
it would genuinely so cool if i somehow also died trying to stop tris from getting limmed. that would be an awesome and good outcome

[hellbooks]

brass/isis/hellbooks F3? no.... no way that works

[hellbooks]

the great thing about wagoning tris is i'll be forced to dive in front of her and be like "get down madam president" and get limmed in her stead. as skitter's partner having to carry on her legacy

out of the many joking scumslips ive made i think this one is one of the most dangerous because someone might read into it as me being like TMI tris is town. i thought about that and decided to click post anyway

[hellbooks]

proud of 4164 and 4165 as probably the first even remotely towny posts i made this whole day phase

[hellbooks]

then of course i immediately tank it by coming off too strong as trying to get fire to hammer

[hellbooks]

im kind of extremely scared at having fireisredsir being in ELO
like hellbooks/brass/fire is really just a nightmare blunt rotation of people who could suddenly and rapidly decide to rescind a townread on me
and also just two people who youd expect to NK me over isis
actually no fire kills isis over me surely
even after that comment of "yeah i was just hoping isis would get threadspewed so that she'd get NKed"
if i wasnt mafia id call that post out for being towny as frick
idk im still scared of their solving chops
im getting everyone who hard townread me killed and thats my fault

[hellbooks]

wow this scum pt got so boring what a snooze fest

[hellbooks]

hellbooks the sellout tossing her clown clothes and putting on the business suit when times get tough what a poser

[hellbooks]

well ive provided a single reads list in the day 1 of each of the last 3 games and havent had scum outside of the bottom tiers of any of them.

heres another thing i pulled that i think is an extremely good emulation of something id want to do as town: like subtly trying to bring attention about my recent reads successes so that people will think im cool, while also trying to avoid implying that im actually good at the game because i dont want to seem egotistical

[hellbooks]

it would actually be such a disaster for me if brassherald had to replace out because poppy would come in and instantly solve the game

[hellbooks]

as long as we're fully pulling back the curtain here the idea is to go back to this post

im going to evilly push my whirlwind of thoughts behind me and say "no comment" about that LOL

and say that i had a theory where fire scum kills isis and brass scum kills me
or something like that

[hellbooks]

now that i think about it i think that would be scummy lol
maybe as town i'd just go like "well i think fire would NK you and i bring this up so that now fire NKs me for the wifom"

[hellbooks]

it would actually be such a disaster for me if brassherald had to replace out because poppy would come in and instantly solve the game

Tough break

[hellbooks]

am i allowed to take any credit for turning this game into the upside world where everyone roleplays as their scumselves or was that all isis or is that just the 2023 meta these days for selfrespecting high wim players

literally getting lightheaded at how scummy this post was LOL

[hellbooks]

i guess maybe there's a world where skitter at some point was like "okay your majesty hellbooks, my being content to be left out is getting me townread so let's swap places"

they call this theory the "occam's laser"

hoping that the dead PT is going wild for this joke rn

[hellbooks]

Im sure that some or even most people play their town game in a way that deliberately makes it possible to emulate as scum. Not me. It is such a chore to emulate my town game (joke) (but the joke obscures some deeper truth)

especially when apparently the thing that my meta hinges on is something completely intangible like how sincere my jokes are

[hellbooks]

bc she's unpocketable and would probably vote me in elo bc it just feels right

obvious brilliancy from fire at completely identifying the exact thing that im afraid of myself. here's hoping that quoting someone in a PT doesnt still notify them

[hellbooks]

What is wim?

bless you NM for asking

[hellbooks]

Want It More, apparently! this has been learning corner with brooks

[hellbooks]

with my newfound knowledge of this term i was thinking about how i would generally always strive to have "zero wim" and then searched up the use of it in this game and came across these posts

hellbooks has posturds a low wim that's postured and shaped like it must be town

[gifv][/gifv]

but if i was town from the dream why didnt i just share it as soon as i woke up instead of saving id for now when im getting cooked alive out here

You knew it'd be tighter play to share it early on but your WIM is so low you still didn't bother

[hellbooks]

exhibiting an incredible amoutn of restraint by choosing not to make any quips that reveal that i know what wim means now, because only high wim players would go and search it up the way i did

[hellbooks]

I don't want to lim hellbooks because too many of her posts made me smile

"can isis have day 3 masonry with ari"
"we have day 3 masonry at home"
day 3 masonry at home:

probably my third favorite post i made this game

[hellbooks]

i was thinking about this thing a lot in the last game where everyone was like "well maybe xof is scum but i wouldn't feel bad about losing a game then" where the emotional impact of a postgame scenario is something that could change what you want to do sometimes, or who you might be willing to overlook in like a "everyone has a similar chance to be scum" scenario. which feels like it corrupts the purity of the game in a cool way (but maybe in a bad or frustrating way sometimes)

like if you have a Big Rival who will like rub it in your face if they snow you, you might naturally want to keep them in check more. maybe thats something that naturally privileges things like sportsmanship, and being a nice person. or just being earnest

but i have yet to see any evidence that people actually do favor those things so maybe not

[hellbooks]

^ post i considered making in the real game and decided not to

[hellbooks]

accidentally became too high wim today thats a problem, gonna tone it down

[hellbooks]

ok so who the fuck do i even nightkill
major kudos to infinity for creating associative scenarios that activate a perfect minefield around me in which any step i take will blow me up

[hellbooks]

this is kind of like a seriously difficult problem actually
like i need to find a scenario in which scum wouldn't kill hellbooks today

this likely points to a framing of fire
like, if fire was scum and tris got mislimmed who would he kill, probably isis
i think to make this scenario best i need to somehow continue to express intent that i'd lim infinity over fire and i kind of utterly failed to do that just now

if infinity is scum
is there a world in which they might kill fire
no not at all

if isis is scum, is there a world in which she might kill fire instead of me, yeah that seems possible
a scenario like isis/hellbooks/infinity positions infinity as the decider between one of me and isis and i think i have like a 60-40 of winning that

so i think maybe i have above average chances of winning in infinity/fire and infinity/isis F3s

[hellbooks]

thinking about posting something like

have you considered that maybe its just me
like maybe it just makes sense that its me and thats the only way that any of this makes sense
and the reason that youre all struggling so much to find the solution is that the truth is so nefarious that you dont even want to accept it, that i just recklessly lasered down skitter for the entirety of D1 with no thought for common decency or human regard as her partner

[hellbooks]

have you considered that maybe its me and the thought of that would be so horrible that you wouldnt even want to accept that the silly little guy who was making you laugh was scum all along

a post that is simply just too manipulative for me to consider posting

[hellbooks]

if you all let me live to f3 im literally going to be scum and win in it
final warning

i think this strikes the balance of bringing in some of the town-me energy of the last two proposed posts without getting overly manipulative or scummy or evil with it

[hellbooks]

i kill isis

Subject to change

[hellbooks]

datisi i know youre not going to tell me but is the deadpt yelling at the screen and saying its obviously hellbooks

[hellbooks]

probably should have thought a little harder about killing infinity but i kind of just wanted to go v/la this weekend like isis lol and just turn my brain off

[hellbooks]

if i were skitters partner i would have bussed her and coasted on the cred

[hellbooks]

excusez mon francais but i am literally going to cock up this elo so hard and everyones gonna point and laugh at me

[hellbooks]

ok i rly want to defend my kill choice here

it just feels like a hellbooks/isis/fire f3 is too openly advantageous for me
idk how big of a role wifom traditionally plays in f3 NK analysis but like
idk i guess isis plausibly kills infinity too and hopes to recruit me into voting fire but it feels like she would obviously benefit way more from killing me instead
i guess it was just a problem to solve for where a kill needed to strike the balance between leaving me a high chance of winning while also leaving plausible explanations for me not getting killed
and i dont really have the extensive mafia experience for that problem to be easy for me

[hellbooks]

if i were skitters partner i would have bussed her and coasted on the cred... o wait

to continue tooting my own horn i think i timed this post perfectly

[hellbooks]

tbh i do think hellbooks makes that kill more often than infinity does

i was in the middle of making a post in this PT that was like "fire's going to realize that while isis is a terrible kill for infinity to make, it's still viable for me to make"

[hellbooks]

simply going to trust that infinity comes in and thinks "well i think that fire makes that kill more often than hellbooks does"

[hellbooks]

patient high school tutor voice: ok so we have two people who said they'd kill hellbooks. meanwhile hellbooks would kill isis. and hellbooks is still alive, while isis is not. so what does that mean?

theres like a savings account that's called "equity for how mad and pissed everyone is going to be if hellbooks turned out to be scum and we didn't lim her" and unfortunately i seem to be dumping all of my net worth into it
but of course that also comes with the fact that if i do get limmed everyones going to be equally as relieved about it and because im an empath i will get to vicariously enjoy the town victory where everyone is like "ok thank fuck ing god that all worked out"

[hellbooks]

i think i need to wait a little bit more before going on the offensive here, but i'll plan on bringing up this post:

id be more likely to keep people like isis/sheep around (and play more to the goals of pocketing them)

hellbooks is an unpredictable enigma and is immune to any tricks id usually pull. i think a consistent pattern in all of my scumgames is not liking to have unpredictable people in endgame

and calling it a bit of a slip because i feel like when you're firescum and in an extremely disadvantageous position, unpredictability is really your best bet in pulling out an unlikely win

[hellbooks]

regarding the phenomenon of people from the dead pt flooding into the postgame and being like "ok scum was so obvious to me" ok well you were dead. the scum knew you were dead so they were free to make a bunch of posts that would have only been scummy to specifically you. if you were alive they wouldnt have made those posts and you wouldnt have scumread them.

[hellbooks]

its funny how everyone in the coal died before anyone outside of the coal did

[hellbooks]

sorry i just literally tossed the whole game into the trash ugh

[hellbooks]

hellbooks, to camera: i just made the scummiest post of all time. i just made a post that was so bad that that everyone will turn to me and throw me into the dumpster and light it on fire.

the game: [proceeds as normal, everyone is calmly chatting with each other]

hellbooks: i am so fucking fucked up

[hellbooks]

[hellbooks]

i think if fire launches an offensive my best move is probably not to fight back and understand that its kind of out of my hands, and rely on infinity making the wrong choice
like any conclusions i could make about firescum can be easily collected by infinity operating without my help

[hellbooks]

well maybe if i can find a way to present the unpredictability argument in a way thats actually convincing, i'd use that

[hellbooks]

i'll leave it as an optional task for you to convince me that you could win as scum in an isis/infinity/fire F3 but please know that this is extremely optional and if you wanted to get started with the blasting i'd hand you a stack of bullets and guns and say take one pass it down

really the best i could do i think

[hellbooks]

hearing fire talk about what he would do as scum made me realize that im way too passive
well skitter gave me the A-OK on the "just mess around until ELO" plan so i think its ok that i was passive at least for this game

[hellbooks]

i should literally have killed infinity
skitters gonna get mad at me for not killing infinity

[hellbooks]

im just simply getting outskilled here on both sides and theres nothing i can do about it
well its too late to do all the things i could have done about it
im just gonna low wim the rest of this game and return to skitter with my head hung low in apology

[hellbooks]

i also think all the nk'ed townies would have wanted to lim you over hellbooks here but i have to make sure on isis

i am begging you to go and make sure on isis

[hellbooks]

excusez mon francais but i am literally going to cock up this elo so hard and everyones gonna point and laugh at me

[hellbooks]

the desperation of wanting to win this game has really started openly leaking out huh
lets try and get rid of that with some breathing exercises or something

[hellbooks]

i guess its really more the desperation of not wanting to lose in such a sad little way
where everyone is like awwwww she twied her best
because then id feel like i need to just leave mafia for greener, more dignified pastures
maybe one with horses

[hellbooks]

the first reason is that I can really easily imagine her going muahaha post game after I misvote

i dispute this... post game i think id try and come out of character and be like "ggs, ggs"
no.... youre right, i might have to get out a couple muahahas

[hellbooks]

i guess i should see if that's something you do as town. it feels like it would be but im not sure

if it isnt lets have this be a learning moment
to do it more as town i mean
new guy invented, guy who is like "i should act more like my scum meta as town" instead of the other way round

[hellbooks]

and there's a lot of little moments that whenever i look at them i think "oh come on scum wouldn't have really done that would they"

would really want fire to tell me at least 2 or 3 of these moments so i can bask in them

[hellbooks]

uaghhghhhhhhhh

my doing a groan in the thread scum meta tell

this is me "lampshading" (as fire put it) something that im worried is genuinely true so let me make sure to sneak in a couple of those in my next town game (and my next scum game to make fire think im sneaking them into a town game)

[hellbooks]

its so unbelievable how much fun this game instantly became again now that everyones shortposting

[hellbooks]

infinity is making me insanely scared right now

[hellbooks]

just going to fully leap into whatever trap theyve constructed for me

[hellbooks]

As sure as ive ever been about anything in my life

infinity: well thats not what you said earlier. VOTE: HELLBOOKS BANGG!!!!!

[hellbooks]

have i literally ever had a 3 page iso in my shit life

[hellbooks]

definitely going back and chuckling sensibly at these two posts

honestly i gotta work too i am literally so busy with work so maybe skitter and i have to go and be hades and hades

isis and skitter are being like persephone and persephone

[hellbooks]

that post is manipulative to an extent that i really want to not be covered by my scumrange but i gritted my teeth and made it anyway sorry

[hellbooks]

i hope i gt scumread for it that'll show me

[hellbooks]

i have been trying very hard to avoid making any posts that a conventional scum guy would make in ELO and i failed here

i keep hitting this wall where i want to agree with the points that infinity is making about hellbooks being towny and im like "damn maybe they're right" but then the alternative is that they are scum and its like ok there is no secret third option for me to vote here (as much as i would like to) so why would scum infinity be trying to convince me that hellbooks is town

the answer to this is surely that scum infinity is trying to seal the deal on convincing me that you are scum
im not sure what not taking this into account means from a "what perspective is fire operating from" angle

[hellbooks]

such a relief that the house of leaves wall is continuing to pay dividends bc i kind of poured all of my living soul into that thing

[hellbooks]

and there's a lot of little moments that whenever i look at them i think "oh come on scum wouldn't have really done that would they"

would really want fire to tell me at least 2 or 3 of these moments so i can bask in them

I guess this ended up happening in main thread

[hellbooks]

intentional or not skitter refusing to banter back with me was a hall of famer scum strategy

[hellbooks]

and alluding to another ugly truth about what affects my motivations for voting, if i vote fire and am wrong i'd imagine isis coming in and be like "yeah thats what i woulda done too" and pat me on the back, but if i vote infinity and am wrong i'd imagine isis sort of giving me a thin smile and saying "dont worry about it"

im editing myself out of saying this i dont want to make isis an unwitting conspirator in my lies

[hellbooks]

ive considered just going "fuck it, fire is town" VOTE: Infinity so many times as the ultimate fire pocket strategy but it seems so ridiculous to do that when theres still an above 50 chance that infinity votes fire firest

[hellbooks]

office finger guns image

[hellbooks]

ive considered just going "fuck it, fire is town" VOTE: Infinity so many times as the ultimate fire pocket strategy but it seems so ridiculous to do that when theres still an above 50 chance that infinity votes fire firest

gonna hate it when this turns out to be the only winning move for me and i realize it too late just like killing infinity or whatever

[hellbooks]

Doggedly continuing my train of low wim jokeposting even in the face of certain death, like the villain who calmly sips on a glass of wine as the cops knock on the door yelling "open up" at the end of a korean crime thriller movie

[hellbooks]

or like the lonely robots in "there will come soft rains" that continue to operate on the only programming they know after their owners are long gone

[hellbooks]

Tragically i feel like ive sacrificed too much of my time i need to spend on doing real life obligations this week already to be able to continue Wanting it More than the others, i want to grind it out and really do all i can to bring it home for skitter but the feeling of simply being unable to keep up was so visceral over the past couple days

The post about lurking at work is a very real lamentation of my extremely limited ability to do any sorts of things these days and how i seem to be putting all of that ability to this

[hellbooks]

As fun as it is
Its like after spending a morning in the thread i feel so winded
Like it will take me an hour to switch gears back to work mode

[hellbooks]

i am struggling to put to words how there is really nothing in the game of mafia to me like being the 2 in a 2:7 micro game, and what contracts of promise or loyalty are established from that
for example, skitter30 is the only other person in existence that knows what it was like to be scum in this specific game and it just feels like that ought to count for something. my brain would want to romanticize it by coming up with a scenario of two people fighting back-to-back against a circle of outnumbering enemies in like an "us against the world" way. or an "

i am heathcliff

" way

(<--wuth spoilers i guess)

i guess in any other situation i'd find it hard to resist deciding to just be done and let it reach its foregone conclusion! and protect myself from the miserable possibility of overdrawing my energy and time to make serious game related content and having it all immediately be for nothing. but in this one id still like to do my best tomorrow, even lacking the skill or experience or precedent of having made any particularly serious or successful arguments in this game. in the losing scenario im moved to try and make do emotionally with the simple fact that at least i tried to give honor to the experience of having skitter shove me into the one escape pod that we have and wishing me good luck before jettisoning me out of the sinking ship

[hellbooks]

its funny to imagine datisi reading that big "hellbooks makes a last stand" sob story while also seeing me going like "looks like i only have to make 1 post tomorrow " in the main thread

[hellbooks]

now im embarrassed for saying all that
if i didnt want to be pitied that was probably not the way to have that happen

[hellbooks]

"ok for example i find myself completely unable to click on a page number thats below, say, 191
and my whole "skitter temple" statement is just a way to communicate how little i want to go and reread right now"

sorry but the way that this is such a lie and is just me using low wim as an excuse to not go backand address something that i have literally no way of addressing
like i cant go back and be like "yeah we didnt do that. we didnt high five as i tagged skitter into the coalition"

because thats what we did

[hellbooks]

i love this little personal quest i have to not reveal in the main thread AT ALL the way that "wim" has had such an iron grip on my mind

for literally no reason at all i just decided i wanted to hide it

[hellbooks]

i just wanted to have an additional little lie about me not knowing what wim is so i can practice lying

[hellbooks]

the 1 2 7 3 vc end to my 20 poststravaganza wasnt intended i just kind of saw that i had 5 posts left and was opportunistic about it

[hellbooks]

im glad i am continuing to be able to come up with high-concept throughlines for my walls

[hellbooks]

i guess fire kindof came up with this one for me
preciate it

[hellbooks]

i just wanted to have an additional little lie about me not knowing what wim is so i can practice lying

now that ive said this i desperately wnat to break the 1 post rule to be like "ok so what the fuck is wim. what is wim. i ltierally dont know what that means" in the main thread

[hellbooks]

sam from perks voice: we accept the mislims we think we deserve
[pearly dewdrops drops plays in the background]

[hellbooks]

controversially and wrongly going to suggest that out of all of the media ive referenced, perks of being a wallflower might be the least annoying one
and of course i cant reference it in main thread for another 12 hours

[hellbooks]

and the thing that realy stings is i HAD the posts i had 5 of them left and of course as soon as i piss them away on 1273 down the rockefeller street NOW i have all this stuff to say

[hellbooks]

what you see here in the past 5 pages of this PT is the effects of prolongued isolation on the brain

[hellbooks]

im a member of a very "based" group whos first thought about emma watson's acting roles is always "oh yeah she was sam from perks"'

[hellbooks]

controversially and wrongly going to suggest that out of all of the media ive referenced, perks of being a wallflower might be the least annoying one

no its literally not its the most annoying one what the fuck was a thinking
that movie literally ended with heroes by david bowie
and PDD didnt even play in the movie it was just on the soundtrack album i think

[hellbooks]

no im simply going to have to stand by the importance of that movie to me

[hellbooks]

i definitely had the thought to come in here today and say something completely inane in three words or less and then be like "alright ive been prohibited from saying anymore" and i guess even now im resisting the impulse to delete all this and do that still
but then i guess id have to come back and say something on saturday so might as well get it all out now

ngl this is kind of what i was expecting for a while but i appreciate busting out all the chops

AND I CANT EVEN SAY THANK YOU
what fresh hell have i imposed upon myself

[hellbooks]

fire's brilliant propagandizing by using "busting out all the chops" a phrase that we've rhetorically established as something that scum does

[hellbooks]

sam from perks voice: we accept the mislims we think we deserve
[pearly dewdrops drops plays in the background]

thinking about this and thinking about all of the ways in which i will never be able to change and feeling myself getting killd from the inside

[hellbooks]

i think it just makes way more narrative sense for me to lose so that this PT becomes like a posthumously released piece of "found writing"
instead of all of the whining that would seem extra unnecessary if the whiner ended up winning anyway

[hellbooks]

fire's brilliant propagandizing by using "busting out all the chops" a phrase that we've rhetorically established as something that scum does

maybe this means that in spite of it all fire has only beomce convinced that im scum after all that

[hellbooks]

if i lose im not going to say any thing in post game but not because i was sore about it (in fact ill be very proud and happy for all of you) but because i want the truth of my inner state to remain a mystery that people are going to ahve to piece together from the posthumous release

[hellbooks]

GGS in advance

[hellbooks]

Skitter: WHY didnt u kill infinity
Me: we accept the night kills we think we deserve

[hellbooks]

인연

i think it's both very cool and also a little tragic that there are words like this that express an idea where if you try to translate it into english it's missing some. well. je ne sais quoi. and it feels like even if you get close it doesn't quite capture it

it's like even having those words unlocked in your vocabulary helps you conceptualize ideas that you didn't fully appreciate as their own distinct thing before, and helps you see the world a little differently. but so much of that potential is locked away in other languages and we probably won't ever get to experience that understanding and new way of viewing things, and that's the tragic part i guess. it makes me want to learn every language and maybe even pay attention in french class

anyway cool word thanks

f9re youre like the best person ever for understanding why i was forced to use that word there=

[hellbooks]

if it is hellbooks scum then i rescind my immediate reaction of calling isis a bad kill it's actually like the only kill you can make there

lets goooo
i was absolved

[hellbooks]

it was really the only kill i could make there bc it was the only kill i thought i deserved

[hellbooks]

im liking this fact that im helpless to do anything but sit by and watch the two town players figure it out for the rest of today
no one can get mad at me for that because its in accordance with the principle of the thing

[hellbooks]

ive considered just going "fuck it, fire is town" VOTE: Infinity so many times as the ultimate fire pocket strategy but it seems so ridiculous to do that when theres still an above 50 chance that infinity votes fire firest

gonna hate it when this turns out to be the only winning move for me and i realize it too late just like killing infinity or whatever

arghhhh i cocked it up
pardon my french. je ne say qua

[hellbooks]

fire later: actually no you were making all of the correct moves, unfortunately town had mate in 10 against you

[hellbooks]

we accept the miswims we think we deserve

[hellbooks]

if it is hellbooks scum then i rescind my immediate reaction of calling isis a bad kill it's actually like the only kill you can make there

lets goooo
i was absolved

in fact i only made that argument in the first place so that town could look critically at the night kill and be like "no actually scumbooks did the right thing there"

[hellbooks]

i think it's both very cool and also a little tragic that there are words like this that express an idea where if you try to translate it into english it's missing some. well. je ne sais quoi. and it feels like even if you get close it doesn't quite capture it

no word in any language will be able to express the idea of wim quite like wim

[hellbooks]

if i make it to tomorrow im going to be like "hey so i was rereading (yes i know i said i wasnt going to do that) and can someone PLEASE explain what wim means"

[hellbooks]

then people are gonna be like "why didnt you look it up" and i will say "i have learned helplessness from not being able to search words that are 3 letters or less in the old mafiascum php search bar" to maintain the lie

[hellbooks]

shea: that clown hellbooks doesnt use her brain for these mafia games at all
me, laying out my rube goldberg mate-in-20 "wim theater": they'll see.... they'll ALL see

[hellbooks]

thank god i did a good job with those nightkills

[hellbooks]

sitting my low wim ass down and sleeping

[hellbooks]

tragically find myself openwolfing here
the end of the movie where the villain's intentions are stripped bare and they lie in a pathetic heap on the ground

[hellbooks]

ive considered just going "fuck it, fire is town" VOTE: Infinity so many times as the ultimate fire pocket strategy but it seems so ridiculous to do that when theres still an above 50 chance that infinity votes fire firest

gonna hate it when this turns out to be the only winning move for me and i realize it too late just like killing infinity or whatever

arghhhh i cocked it up
pardon my french. je ne say qua

ultimately cowardice was my downfall; i have only myself to blame

[hellbooks]

although the halls of victory wont be open to someone like me, i'll watch from outside the window. my only tears are that of pride. as if i had raised each of you with my own hand.

[hellbooks]

so im rereading a little bit (yes i know i said i wasnt going to do that) and can someone PLEASE explain what wim means i'm literally begging any of you

this is where im going to leave it, i think

[hellbooks]

live fast die young and leave behind one last pretty lie for everyone to behold

[hellbooks]

laughing near-deliriously at having wim explained to me
i think with the last dozen or so posts in this scum PT its going to be even more embarrassing if we win than if we lose

ive kind of perfectly crafted this scum PT to maximize embarrassment for either outcome though

[hellbooks]

the way that so much of my soloposting in this PT is just postgame presents that I left exclusively for fireisredsir

[hellbooks]

if i lose im not going to say any thing in post game but not because i was sore about it (in fact ill be very proud and happy for all of you) but because i want the truth of my inner state to remain a mystery that people are going to ahve to piece together from the posthumous release

or like someone who just flatly refuses to speak to the media after being a central figure in some Mysterious Complex Criminal Incident and so true crime podcasts decades later have to be like "yeah all of this information we have about her is secondhand because she spent the rest of her life refusing to give interviews about it"

[hellbooks]

also want to close out this scum pt the same way i started it which is apologizing to skitter
just like old times

[hellbooks]

i'll watch from outside the window

going to defy that neat bookending to get in one last "this is like wuthering heights" zinger

[hellbooks]

one of the greatest comforts of this loss is watching infinity shine like a star and deliver the perfect neat bookending that this nightmarishly sprawling 200 page narrative so desperately needed

farewell